Vagrants and Citizens: Politics and the Masses in Mexico City from Colony to Republic (review)

In Vagrants and Citizens, Richard Warren illuminates political activity at the popular level in Mexico City. He argues that the greatest threat to Spain in its last decade of imperial rule was not insurrection, but popular suffrage. Using a wide array of sources, including minutes of legislative debates, constitutions, electoral laws and statistics, petitions, police reports, and memoranda, and cultural texts such as pamphlets, newspapers, slogans, speeches, handbills, novels, memoirs, songs, and parade floats, Warren asserts that the exercise of the right to suffrage by the "the masses" in Mexico City challenged late colonial and early republican leadership, until "hombres de bien" narrowed the electoral process with minimum income requirements by the 1830s. In this examination of contested liberalism, Warren embraces European historiography on political culture, especially Derek Sayer and Lynn Hunt. The thesis that political participation of the poor was at the center of heated debate over the destiny of the Mexican nation unifies five short chronological chapters

The strength of this book lies in detailed examinations of rules and mechanisms of suffrage, electoral outcomes, and ensuing conflicts among elected representatives, their opponents, and heads of state. Warren reminds us that electoral politics predated independence, with colonial residents choosing delegates to the Spanish Cortes and municipal councils under the Spanish Constitution of 1812. Creole autonomists, Iturbidists, York Masons, Santanistas, and radical Federalists all incorporated popular sectors into strategies for gaining power on local councils, in congress, and in the presidency. The memory of popular mobilizations that transformed "vagrants" into citizens convinced other statesmen (both liberal and conservative) that electoral politics should be restricted. Discussions of voter turnout and voting patterns in different elections, and of why some elections were peaceful while others sparked upheaval, are important contributions to the literature on liberalism. Pamphlets stand out as rich sources for the study of popular politics, though the extent to which those ascribed to bakers, carpenters, and weavers represent real artisan views or pamphleteer agendas is debatable. Warren deconstructs the symbolic politics embedded in rituals such as elections, processions, national celebrations, and the public reading of new constitutions. Those interested in the changing role of the capital in national politics will benefit from Warren's close study of local sovereignty issues, jurisdictional conflicts between Federal District governors and municipal councils, and federalist-centralist debates.

Warren argues that elections were part of a spectrum of political participation that included "spontaneous and quotidian encounters" (p. 16), but these encounters do not get the detailed attention that elections do. Elite responses to, and fomenting of, popular mobilization are featured, but we learn little about non-elite participants themselves, especially beyond those voting. Unlike Sara Chamber's recent study of Arequipa, Peru, in this same period, Warren does not fully develop the world in which "the masses" lived, how home and workplaces were shaped by intersections of ethnic, class, and gender identities. Aside from the recurring anti-gachupín sentiments of the largely creole populace he highlights, the popular politics at the center of this story occur in a vacuum, and readers are left to wonder how daily life shaped the political participation of non-elite men and women, whether in electoral campaigns or street demonstrations. To what extent was formal politics a constructed patriarchal realm, and citizenship tied to masculinity? Why would a pamphlet discourse about electing "Fathers of the Nation" (p. 58) and the inclusion of young women on festival stages have resonance for city residents? In a city where a third of the households had female heads, might women have been among the crowds protesting "impressments, currency devaluations, or the price of staples" (p. 16)? Warren's argument that "elections measured the temperature of the body politic" (p. 53) would be stronger had he better established...